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Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
bit_user The physical damage makes me suspect the second DIMM might've been pulled from an e-waste stream. At my job, e-waste goes into a giant box on a palette, in our loading dock. When it fills up, somebody comes and hauls it off. The condition of some machines and monitors in that bin tells me that some people are rather violent when they chuck stuff in there. Some of the machines are opened or partly dismantled, which could expose the DIMM to physical damage. I've recovered working monitors from it that were discarded simply for being old, because a bunch of identical ones were tossed all at once and most of the ones I checked tested perfectly. Unfortunately, a most of them also had blemishes on the panel, by the time I found them. Reply
helper800 bit_user said: The physical damage makes me suspect the second DIMM might've been pulled from an e-waste stream. At my job, e-waste goes into a giant box on a palette, in our loading dock. When it fills up, somebody comes and hauls it off. The condition of some machines and monitors in that bin tells me that some people are rather violent when they chuck stuff in there. Some of the machines are opened or partly dismantled, which could expose the DIMM to physical damage. I've recovered working monitors from it that were discarded simply for being old, because a bunch of identical ones were tossed all at once and most of the ones I checked tested perfectly. Unfortunately, a most of them also had blemishes on the panel, by the time I found them. Where I work, its close to the same process. Each site sends in their surplus e-waste to the district office throughout the year. Things can range from older vga / dvi monitors to corded peripherals. Our DO tech department goes through anything with a storage drive in it to remove and retain those devices. The rest of the PC which is usually reassembled is dumped onto a pallet for tech surplus. Once the DO gets enough e-waste, they either auction it off, sell it by weight, or dispose of it as e-waste depending upon the contents of each pallet. For devices with soldered storage, they are completely wiped before being sent out to the pallets. Reply
bit_user helper800 said: Our DO tech department goes through anything with a storage drive in it to remove and retain those devices. Yeah, our process involves drives getting pulled and wiped before the device goes into the e-waste bin. Many of our laptops and desktops are leased, in which case they're returned to the leasing company, rather than discarded as e-waste. My laptop was originally meant to be on a 3-year lease, but I'm now starting my 5th year on it. It could use more RAM, but otherwise is holding up alright. Reply
crypticc Hello Is closing correct or a typo? Reads really oddly to say they've trained a memory module. "Finally, a new PMIC chip ended the quest , and this second DDR5 DIMM powered on and trained successfully ." Reply
bill001g I wonder what the most common failure of memory modules really is. If you lose one the actual memory chips I can't see it be real viable to replace it or swap it from another module. You likely can't get new memory chips easily since they are all likely committed to the large memory factories. Getting some random memory chip to function with the other memory chips is not very likely. There are a number of youtube video showing how these are manufactured and the system tests every chip and then groups them with other similar chips to make up a module. If you could just put random chips on a module and it works they would not have that massive testing and sorting step. It seems this guy just replaces some shorted capacitor and it magically fixed all his boards. Likely there are a lot of boards he can't fix but doesn't bother to show. Reply
bit_user crypticc said: Is closing correct or a typo? Reads really oddly to say they've trained a memory module. "Finally, a new PMIC chip ended the quest , and this second DDR5 DIMM powered on and trained successfully ." Yes, the article is correct. It's explained here: https://www.howtogeek.com/what-is-ddr5-memory-training/ Reply
alan.campbell99 The majority of ewaste I produce from repairs is enclosures or screens. Most major parts like the mainboards and SSDs go back to the manufacturer for repair . One manufacturer uses soldered on RAM but still uses a discrete SSD, I very rarely have to replace an SSD. Most HPs here still use SODIMMs except for the higher end models where they also go onboard RAM. Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ddr5/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ddr5/customer-sends-two-stick-usd16-000-ddr5-memory-kit-to-repair-shop-soaring-replacement-costs-make-dimm-repairs-viable-technician-revives-dead-module-with-hot-air-reflow-and-new-pmic#main
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